Zeal and Ardor Archives - NO CLEAN SINGING

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: BLUT AUS NORD, ZEAL AND ARDOR, BAPTISTS, CHRCH, LLNN, MORGENGRAU, ABYTHIC, SECTIONED, ATONE

Mar 222018

On each of the last three days I intended to post a round-up of new music and videos that I thought were worth your time, and each day I failed. I would have run out of time again today if I hadn’t managed to throttle my usual verbosity. In fact, I’ve resorted to sentence fragments rather than complete sentences in order to get this done.

As the days passed, of course, some of the items in this post have become a bit dated, and the volume of selections has swelled with newer discoveries.

BLUT AUS NORD

After more than 20 years of musical activity, Blut Aus Nord finally released their first-ever music video a few days ago. The chosen song is “Metanoïa“, which appears on Deus Salutis Meae, which I reviewed here, accompanying our premiere of the first publicly revealed track from the album. Continue reading »

ROADBURN FESTIVAL 2017 — A PHOTO ESSAY BY LEVAN TK (DAY 2)

Concert Reviews 1 Response »

May 312017

The latest edition of Roadburn Festival took place at Tilburg, The Netherlands, on April 20-23, 2017, and L.A.-based photographer extraordinaire Levan TK was there to capture the performances on film.

We are fortunate to bring you some of his amazing photos, divided among the days of the festival, with his photos from the second day in this post. To see the photos from Day One, go here. Photos from the remainder of fest will be coming soon.

P.S. Levan was quick to get us these photos. The delay in sharing them is entirely the fault of our half-wit editor. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: HIDEOUS DIVINITY, FIRESPAWN, WOLFHEART, FUOCO FATUO, ZEAL AND ARDOR, EXOCRINE, SEPULCHRAL

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 12 Responses »

Feb 042017

It’s been a crazy week for this half-witted editor. Interferences by my fucking day job coupled with interferences by my non-blogging personal life prevented me from posting any news and new-music round-ups all week. That means I’ve accumulated an enormous list of things since last weekend. Unfortunately, I still won’t have time to catch up this weekend.

I’ve got work I need to do today for an annual event I’m attending tonight with my spouse, and based on past experience, I’ll be in no condition to write anything on Sunday morning. I’ve agreed to post one premiere tomorrow, which I’ll get ready today, but there probably won’t be anything else on the site tomorrow. Maybe the coming week will be less crazy and I can do a delayed Shades of Black thing and/or a “That’s Metal!” post after the new week begins.

Okay, enough with the excuses. On to a regrettably small but diverse collection of new things I noticed last week.

HIDEOUS DIVINITY

When I first started using the title “Seen and Heard“, it was because I intended to include both news about, and artwork from, new albums, even when there was nothing yet to hear, as well as streams of new songs. And I have items in both categories to recommend today in this large collection, beginning with the artwork at the top of this post. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2016’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 5): GHOST, HAIL SPIRIT NOIR, ZEAL AND ARDOR

Exceptions to the Rule, MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2016 6 Responses »

Jan 062017

As you can see, this is the fifth installment in our unfolding list of last year’s “Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs“. As you can also see (or will soon discover), not all of the songs in this installment are extreme, or even metal, and there’s a lot of clean singing as well. Feel free to harumph and harang in the Comments, but I could not get comfortable with the idea of looking back at the most infectious songs of last year without including all of these, and I also found a pleasing kind of twisted symmetry in combining them in a single post.

To see the other selections for the list so far, as well as an explanation of what criteria were used in making it, go here.

GHOST

From my perspective, it’s not worth debating whether Ghost are a metal band or not. There are good arguments to be made on both sides. What I think is beyond debate is the band’s ability to craft immensely catchy songs, and not the kind of cotton candy fluff that makes you sick to your stomach after the fifth or sixth time you’ve heard it, which seems to be true of a high percentage of catchy pop songs. Also, they continue to praise the Devil, and I give them horns up for that. Whether the praise is calculated or sincere is a subject we can debate on another day, or not at all. Continue reading »

VIDEOGRAPHY: ZEAL AND ARDOR, GODCHILLA, MORS PRINCIPIUM EST, WOLVENNEST, INFERITVM

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 1 Response »

Dec 172016

We devoted ourselves largely to year-end LISTMANIA over the past week, but that didn’t stop the torrent of new metal from continuing to flow. I have a large list of interesting things I spotted during the week, and I’ve divided the best of them among several posts for this weekend.

In this first one I’ve collected five videos. Three of them are new and two are older. I picked these in part because they make for quite a varied montage of sights and sounds. I’ll mention that a new Kreator song and video also appeared yesterday, which you can find here, even though I decided not to include it.

ZEAL AND ARDOR

There have been some interesting discussions in our LISTMANIA comment threads about Devil Is Fine, the 2016 album by Zeal and Ardor. Some people think it’s too uneven and disjointed to deserve the acclaim it’s received this year (and in lots of year-end lists). While agreeing that it’s uneven, I’m in the camp of people who think the high points on the album are so creative and interesting that it deserves the attention — which is pretty much what I wrote within days of its release last June. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): ZEAL AND ARDOR, HOPELESS YOUTH, THRAWSUNBLAT, CONCRETE MASCARA, BENEATH THE STORM, JUPITERIAN

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 10 Responses »

Jun 102016

I spent the last three days doing some catch-up work on recent premieres and releases from the realms of black metal, and today it’s time to shift gears and begin a series of round-ups of new music from other corners of the underground. My NCS comrade DGR is working on a round-up of his own, but even between the two of us we still won’t succeed in covering everything good that we’ve found over the last two weeks (when our round-ups were scarce).

Having said that, we may still threaten to overwhelm our readers with the volume of what we’re recommending. To give you a chance to catch your breath, I’m dividing my collection of recommendations into at least two parts, with the second one to come tomorrow (Saturday). I’ve also attempted to mix up the styles of music within each of these two parts in the hope of appealing to a broad array of tastes (and keeping you off-balance, of course).

ZEAL AND ARDOR

Zeal and Ardor is the name of a music project based in New York City. I’m calling it a “project”, because I have no idea who is behind it, or whether it’s the work of one person or more than one; I’ve searched and can find no background information at all. This mysterious project released a self-titled album in June 2014 that I did not know existed, and in mid-April of this year they released a second one named Devil Is Fine — which is unlike anything I’ve heard before. Continue reading »